What is religion? Why do we pray? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2014)

Question: What is religion? Why do we pray?

Speaker: The mind is off-center. It remains distracted, a little away from its core. That is the reason it feels restive, uneasy. That is why there is always an urge to achieve, to reach somewhere, to feel fulfilled. All of that is because the mind is not really at its center.

Religion is the way that brings the lost mind back to its center; its Home. That is religion.

Now when you are away from your Home, then what brings you back, that way too, is not really your Home. It’s a path in space, an area, other than your Home.

So essentially, religion consists of: saying something to the mind, doing things that calm the mind down; all in the domain of mind itself.

But the central purpose, as you would be seeing by now, of religion, is to bring man back to where he really belongs – his Centre, his Core, his Essence. That is also the test of true religion. Does it distract you further? Does it make you even more lost, or does it help you return?

Now because everybody is at a different point, everybody is conditioned differently, hence everybody is at a different point, in his own universe, which means, that everybody will have to find a separate way to come back.